1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a print control apparatus, a print control method, a print control program, a printer, a print method, a print program, and a recording medium which are capable of performing an appropriate print setting operation by setting a combination of a plurality of printer setting means.
2. Related Art
Generally, a print control method in which information on a print job is treated as print job definition data such as DPA (Document Printing Application), JDF (Job Definition Format), or the like for printing print data described in a page description language (PDL) such as PostScript (a trademark of Adobe Systems incorporated, U.S.A) is known.
The print job definition data includes print job specification data and print job setting data. The print job specification data, also referred to as print specification information, is information including a specification of a printed material required as a final output of a print process. Accordingly, the print job definition data is required to be converted into printer setting data that is setting data for a printer. In such a case, the operation for setting the printer can be performed by using means such as a control code (PJL (Printer Job Language) or the like), a page description language (PDL) (representatively, Post Script or the like), or the like.
As an invention having such conversion means for converting the print job definition data into the printer setting data, an invention in which the internal status of PDL processing means of a print control apparatus can be set on the basis of data represented in a format other than the PDL format that can be processed by the PDL processing means of the print control apparatus is described in JP-A-10-124272. As shown in FIG. 11, a client device 20 transmits a job 200, which is formed by adding DPA data 204 representing a new print setting to the conventional PDL data 202, to a print server 10. A controller 106 of the print server 10 extracts the DPA data 202 from the job 200 and inputs the DPA data 202 to a DPA conversion unit 108. The DPA conversion unit 108 converts the DPA data 202 into PDL data 202a and inputs the PDL data to a PDL interpreter 110. The PDL interpreter 110 sets the internal status thereof by interpreting the data 202a. When the PDL interpreter 110 completes interpretation of the data 202a, the controller 106 inputs the PDL data 204 to the PDL interpreter 110. Consequently, the PDL data 204 is processed on the basis of the settings of the DPA data 202.
In addition, as an apparatus for receiving the PJL and the PDL, there is an image forming apparatus disclosed in JP-A-2004-188619. This apparatus provides an image forming apparatus that can be easily used by enabling a user to set a preferential means from among a panel for setting various functions, a super option, the PJL, and the PDL. The image forming apparatus includes a panel setting unit for setting various functions including a double sided printing setting, a discharge destination setting, and a sort setting, a super option processing unit, and a PJL processing unit and has a mode in which settings of various functions set by a panel setting control unit 25 is treated to be preferential.
However, when the print job definition data is to be converted into the printer setting data in a case where there is a plurality of printer setting means, the above-described apparatus described in JP-A-10-124272 or JP-A-2004-188619 cannot perform the conversion process. Thus, an operation for setting the printer is required to be performed by using means such as the control code PJL or the page description language PDL together.
In other words, according to the invention described in JP-A-10-124272, general print job definition data (the technology described in JP-A-10-124272 is DPA) cannot be directly interpreted by the printer (the PDL processing means), and there is a problem that the print setting operation cannot be performed in some cases without means for converting the description of the print job definition data into a format that can be interpreted by the printer.
In addition, the invention described in JP-A-2004-188619, is an image forming apparatus that can be set by using a panel, a super option such as a command line option, the PJL, or the PDL. The image forming apparatus can precede a panel setting over other settings when settings are overlapped or the like. However, the image forming apparatus does not combine other printer setting means. In other words, according to the invention described in JP-A-2004-188619, although a print control code such as the PJL along with the PDL can be used as printer setting means, however, only preferential means from between the PJL and the PDL used as means can be set, and using the PJL and the PDL together is not considered. Accordingly, the image forming apparatus is useless in terms of the processing cost, the processing capacity, and the like, and there is a problem that an appropriate process cannot be performed.
When the PJL and the PDL are compared to each other, the PJL has a light processing load on the printer side. On the other hand, while the PDL has a heavy load on the printer side and requires consumption of large memory, the PDL can implement various print settings. Thus, in order to optimize (decrease) the process load, researches on a method in which a control code is used for a case where a setting can be made by the control code and the PDL is used for a case where a high-level setting is required are requested.